Pipelinersales Releases Four Pitfalls to Avoid When Measuring Sales Pipelines

Only Measuring Closing Rate Tops in Most Ignored Sales Danger

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) January 30, 2014

Pipelinersales Inc. announced the release of "Four Pitfalls To Avoid When Measuring Your Sales Pipeline," graphically represented in an infographic with percentages of sales that ignore these pitfalls. Pipelinersales is committed to not only provide an exceptional CRM tool, but training and education to help salespeople sell smarter.

Once a robust sales process is created for an organization, the next step is to ensure that it can be accurately measured. The figures generated will provide the clarity needed to make better decisions and ensure smarter execution of ideas. By quantifying the performance of the sales pipeline, sales can identify gaps, proactively tackle the challenges that kill conversion rates and as a result, close more sales. Here are the four common pitfalls to avoid when measuring the sales pipeline:

#1: Only measuring your closure rate- 43% ignore this

Closure rate is a key performance metric, however, if only this one metric is utilized, sales misses out on a whole range of other KPIs that could help make more sales. With concentration on closure rates, sales ends up only focusing on the sure-fire leads and opportunities that sit towards the bottom of the sales funnel or sales pipeline. There is a huge risk in this strategy because if sales don’t keep an eye on the performance further up the sales funnel, they risk falling foul to the “feast and famine syndrome”. After all, in order to close a deal, leads need to be nurtured in the first place. By focusing primarily on the bottom of the funnel, sales will only have a retrospective forecast and won’t have a clear view of where sales are going.

#2: Not differentiating between leads and qualified leads- 28% ignore this

This is an interesting pitfall that is often tied into the relationship between marketing and sales. There’s often a “love-hate” relationship between sales and marketing. If marketing’s job is to generate leads, and sale’s job is to nurture and close those leads, what happens when the leads that are generated are poor quality? A poor quality lead is unlikely to convert, and if this is passed directly onto sales, it’s possible that a lot of resources will be wasted. After all, not all leads are equal. By having a robust strategy very early in the sales pipeline, differentiating between qualified and non-qualified leads, it is far easier to measure success and performance.

#3: Not measuring progression (and leakage) through the whole funnel- 26% ignore this

It can be tempting to focus all attention on the sure-fire leads and opportunities. However, by doing this sales risks losing sight on what’s happening at the top of the sales funnel. Clearly, not every lead will convert into a prospect. But if prediction can be made on where prospects are being lost, calculations can be made by working backwards to figure out how many prospects are needed at each stage of the sales pipeline to achieve the overall sales target. In addition to measuring the leakage at each stage of the sales process, also needed is information on average, how quickly prospects will move from stage to stage. Without this information, it will be very difficult to accurately forecast.

#4: Looking at your sales pipeline as a static entity- 18% ignore this

Once the sales pipeline has been created and the metrics needed to measure its performance introduced, sales can start to explore and model different scenarios. If this is not done (and instead the pipeline is viewed as static), opportunities will be missed to increase the velocity of the sales pipeline, model the impact of making improvements at different stages, and drive growth.

Pipeliner CRM assists sales to avoid these 4 common pitfalls. Exclusive to Pipeliner CRM is an intuitive graphic representation of the sales pipeline. This enables the individual salesperson, as well as management, to be intimately involved with sales through a very unique user experience. Sales management, as well as other departments such as Marketing and Finance, can have a 360-degree view of sales, utilizing the results for management, marketing campaigns, sales analysis and financial forecasts. With Pipeliner, sales forecasts—along with closing rates—can be determined. Sales analytics and sales forecasting are vital not only to the survival of a sales department, but to an overall company as well. With Pipeliner, salespeople have a powerful tool to empower them to be the entrepreneurs that they are.

About Nikolaus Kimla
Nikolaus Kimla is the founder and managing partner of Pipelinersales, Inc. and the creator of Pipeliner. Kimla is also the initiator of the independent economic platform GO AHEAD! which is based on the principles of free market economy. He is the author of Salespeople Embracing It All, The IT Revolution and Empty Coffers--New Burdens. For more information on Nikolaus Kimla: http://www.nikolauskimla.com

About Pipelinersales Inc.
More than 19 years ago, Nikolaus Kimla set the foundation for Pipeliner’s future with his company uptime IT-Technologies Inc. The creation of Pipeliner CRM initiated in 2007 and has been steadily developed through intense research. Pipeliner is next generation sales CRM software designed to empower sales teams and grow profitable customer relationships. Pipeliner CRM gives new ways to look at, and to interact with an active sales pipeline. It brings the power of sales data back to salespeople with unique methods that empower salespeople and make managing complex sales easy and fun.